Letters/Comments

I relocated to San Diego about a year ago from Michigan, and before that, Fort Lauderdale. As both a maritime professional and as a lifelong boater, I came here expecting to use my center console boat as I had in other places: going to dinner, running errands, and general transport. I’ve always called it my “pickup truck.” Here in San Diego, that’s effectively impossible. There are only a few places in the Bay where I can tie up: Joe’s Crab Shack, Coronado’s Town Dock, and Bali Hai. Coming from Fort Lauderdale, it’s frustrating. There, I had a selection of hundreds of restaurants and businesses to choose from. The same is true in Muskegon, Long Island, Miami, Milwaukee, Seattle, Newport Beach and many others. All of these cities reap great benefits from the boat traffic. Water taxis carry people from place to place, relieving traffic and parking pressure. Families stop in for lunch. Restaurants fill their docks with well-heeled boaters looking to spend money.
I walk down the Embarcadero’s miles of empty seawall and wonder how much money San Diego is leaving on the table by not accommodating boaters who would like to tie up and experience the Gaslamp, Seaport Village, Harbor Island, Shelter Island, and particularly Liberty Station.
When I ask around the community, I encounter a frustration that’s similar to mine. I also hear answers like, “The permitting process is too tough”.
The purpose of this letter is to start a dialog. There has to be a way.
I have a few suggestions to get the conversation going:
-How about metered pay parking for boats, both along the Embarcadero and in the turning basin next to the Midway? This should do a lot to offset costs. It’s a proven model in the parking industry, and all of the technology already exists.
-Liberty Station has a lot of businesses that struggle for traffic. There’s room along their canal to tie up an infinite numbers of dinghies, and it has very quick boat access from both Shelter and Harbor Island, home to thousands of boats in slips. I know that if I could boat to Liberty, I would almost never drive there.
Working together, we can create a vibrant waterfront community here in San Diego. We will model it after the successful communities that have done so, such as Lauderdale or Northport, New York (which has a very similar Embarcadero to ours, just lined with yachts, their owners in town, spending money). Let’s start talking about it.Captain Jay Williams

Let’s do the math
The Log tells us, “The mean sea level in California has increased by 8 inches since the early 1900s. A National Research Council study published in 2012 predicted sea levels along the California coast are expected to increase by 17 to 66 inches by 2100.”
Arithmetic says that 66 inches over the next 84 years is over 10 times the rate of 8 inches since 1900. The San Francisco tide gauge shows that the rate of sea level rise has varied since 1885 when records began. The rate over a 30 year period has been as high as 4 mm/yr in the 1880s and as low as a negative -0.5 mm/yr in 2011. The current rate over the last 30 years is 1.5 mm/yr and the overall rate since 1885 is also 1.5 mm/yr.
The obvious question to ask is, when will the rate of sea level begin to accelerate to values needed to achieve the predictions from the National Research Council?Steve Case

Math aside, what is their answer?
Damn, I hate it when statistics get in the way of proclamations from the government. I’d sure like to hear their answer to your probing question.Tom Von Der Ahe

Is the sea level really rising…
Or is California sinking?Bob Austin

Don’t get crazy with climate change
Another alarmist in action! 7″ in 100 years, .007″ in 1 year, or not even a 10th of an inch in 10 years! Average human hair is 0.004 thick, so in 1 year time the sea rises two hairs or less in height! A garbage article spouting from a climate change knucklehead! Anyone can spin data to their cause. This is just horse pucky!Glueguy

2 thoughts on “Letters/Comments”

Captain Jay Williams Hits the nail on the head. Newport Harbor has some of that idea already in play – and they are benefiting financially from it. It is time for San Diego bay to come into the modern times.